I have gotten to a point where I can draw simple diagrams using lines and circles. However it took me a lot of time to complete a simple house plan. It seems it will take me for ever if I were to complete a complex diagram, I don't know what I need to focus on to get up to speed. Can someone help?

Stein D wrote:I have gotten to a point where I can draw simple diagrams using lines and circles. However it took me a lot of time to complete a simple house plan. It seems it will take me for ever if I were to complete a complex diagram, I don't know what I need to focus on to get up to speed. Can someone help?

I think 'practice' is the keyword here...just keep doing it and in a few months most functions will become second nature and you just use them without thinking about them. There are so many command and functions in AutoCAD that you can learn them all, but you don't need them all anyway. I would start learning advanced functions such as x-ref, blocks, layers, attributes one by one so that once you counter them in a professional environment, you know what to do.

Learn how to make and use blocks as that will be one of the biggest time savers of all. Imagine you are drawing that floor plan again but this time when you need to add a window or a door you just insert a pre-made block of the object. Or imagine that you are drawing an electrical schematic that requires a number of push buttons or selector switches. If you had a block representing both those objects you could just insert them whenever and wherever they are needed.

Something else that will make you faster is the use of lisp routines that handle repetitive tasks. Lisp is a programming language used by AutoCAD. For example you might have a lisp routine that would change your text style or height globally or one that would let you edit a set of attributed blocks in one go. Powerful stuff indeed.